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Thursday, May 26, 2016

Another Bear of a Day, or is it Bears? Fort Nelson, B.C.

After dinner in Fort Nelson, we went for a drive to get a picture of Fort Nelson River. Marcia got a picture of the Muskwa River when we came into town, but it merges with the Fort Nelson River just a little down stream. After getting the pictures of Fort Nelson River, we headed back…and these two bears, about 1/4 mile apart from each other, were right along side the road. The one on the left I got out the driver’s side window…the one on the right Marcia got out her window. I think she had the better looking bear, that’s for sure. More on that later…

While on the subject, here are the views of Fort Nelson River, the one on the left is looking to the Southwest toward Fort Nelson, while the other one is looking north. The time was around 7 pm.

I think we got on the road around 9 am this morning, we were in no hurry. As we left Dawson Creek, we see lots of Greek Fields of Dandelions that they use in Horta. Yum! Yum!! Yum!!! (NOT for this non-Greek boy). On the right there was a field full of lambs…another Greek delicacy…now that is something this non-Greek boy does appreciate, and my wife cooks it the best!

We then cross over the Kiskatinaw River. Now you have an option here…you can take a short detour to the east before the river, and get on a portion of the old Alaska Highway, and cross over the old wooden Kiskatinaw River Bridge…but we decided not to do that since it would be difficult to get a good picture of the bridge without unhooking the car, driving down to the campground area, take your pictures, drive back and hook up. So we decided to just skip the original wooden bridge and enjoy the pictures that others have taken.

Next is the Peace River area, just outside of the community of Taylor.

Getting a picture of the Peace River while driving is a real challenge because the traffic on the bridge does not allow for much slowing down. If you look closely at the “Pipe Bridge”, there are men on that horizontal plank hanging just to the left of the large tower in the right side of the picture. Not sure what they were doing…almost like window cleaners in a high rise without any windows.

After that we saw trees, trees, trees the occasional river, and more and more trees. In one of the movies we saw yesterday, the narrator said that one of the army men who worked on the highway was asked what he saw during his time in Canada and Alaska…he said, “Trees, trees and more trees.” The forest is very thick with trees, and the movies both showed how they mowed a path through the trees with bulldozers. One could only imagine this scene through much of the drive we made today.

Eventually we finally saw some mountains to go with the trees. Once or twice I spotted some larger mountains way off in the distance to the west…but they were hidden by the clouds, and they were at least 80-90 miles away.

Above is the Muskwa River, that you pass over as you arrive in Fort Nelson. Filled up with gas, and we took about 4 more liters than last fill up going the same amount of miles…and it cost us $35 more Canadian dollars than it did in Dawson Creek.

We took our time today, no hurry, no rush…slowed down to allow trucks and even other RVs to pass us, cars were on their own. We arrived in Fort Nelson around 3:00, and checked in at the Triple G Hideaway RV Park. We drove 280 miles in six hours…not a blazing speed, that’s for sure. The highway was in great condition for 80% of the drive, OK condition for 15% of the drive, and only 5% was in somewhat harsh conditions…but not as harsh as we drove through between Hinton and Dawson Creek. Only had one rude driver to deal with today, and that was when we were on this isolated road between the airport and the Fort Nelson Bridge stopped for bear picture time when a pickup drove right up to us, finally pulled to our left to pass, and honked his horn at us. Seeing him coming, I had put our blinkers on…and there was no way he could have missed the bear. I guess he does not like dealing with tourist, which means he should find another town to live in because they estimate 300,000 RVs pass through Fort Nelson on their way to Alaska…which means 300,000 come back through the other way at the end of summer too.

1 comment:

Don't you just love all the bears? I remember long stretches of forest ... a couple of which were on fire. Instead of clouds, there was smoke. It's good to go slow ... take your time and enjoy the beautiful countryside.

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